scars like souvenirs
by so caffeinated
Summary: He soaks them up, drinks them in and lets them wash through him. It's not enough  It's never enough .


**scars like souvenirs**

**Author**: Isisuf

**Rating**: T (at most)

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing. I'd appreciate it if you didn't sue me. Thanks!

**Summary**: He soaks them up, drinks them in and lets them wash through him. It's not enough (It's never enough).

**Spoilers:** Mild through 3.3

**Author's Notes**: While I've been writing fanfic for a very long time, this is my first foray into Vampire Diaries fic and the first piece I've posted in years. I hope you enjoy it! (Feedback is lovely)

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><p>They think he hunts and stalks and kills because he's evil, because he thrills in it, gets off on losing control and feeling the life seep from a co-ed or a soccer mom or a debutante. That's not him. Never was. They pegged the wrong Salvatore for that M.O.<p>

_He doesn't cross paths much with Stefan in 1922 or '23 or '24, despite their shared love of speakeasies and flappers. Chicago's a big city. They haven't spoken in years and haven't agreed on anything in even longer. There's no reason to reconnect now. When you're immortal, rehashing the same fights over and over seems even more redundant._

_Still, he hears tale of his brother's indiscretions, girls and boys, men and women all left in bits and pieces with jagged edges that don't quite match up anymore. Stefan puts them back together like a jigsaw puzzle because it's easier for him than seeing the evidence of what he's done in his bloodlust and trying to piece himself back together afterwards._

He's a predator by nature, that much is true. They all are. No amount of conditioning or rationalization will ever change that, no matter what Saint Stefan has said in the more lucid moments of his past. (He feels sure the Mystic Falls squirrel population will back him up on this one). They are what they are and while Stefan has denied that vehemently, Damon has always been one to hide behind it.

"_I'm a _vampire,_ Bree," he told her, eyes widening for emphasis. As if she didn't already know. As if she didn't have the scars on her thigh and her soul to prove his point. _

_He doles out scars like souvenirs of his love because they're all he's ever been left with when it ends. And it always ends._

"_I hunt. I kill. It's what I am."_

_Bree doesn't think to ask why. No one ever does._

The thing no one sees, the thing even Stefan doesn't get, is that for him it's not about the thrill or the thirst. At least not in the sense they think. The thing he's hungry for isn't something blood can slake.

He drinks and drinks and drinks, depraved and gluttenous because he's hollow, a bottomless void that craves what it can never have. He takes them into himself, drop by precious drop, takes their humanity into himself and revels in it for a few short seconds before it dilutes and flows through him, mingling with death until the cancer of his vampirism whittles it down to nothingness.

_He envies his brother as much as he hates him (and loves him). No matter which way his switch is flipped, his little brother finds his niche. His make-believe human life with Elena at his side and homework in his backpack was as convincing as his ripper routine is now and Damon wants that, just a piece of that, for his own. _

_Belonging is always something that's been elusive to him, vampire or otherwise._

He drinks her in but not in the usual way. She wears her humanity - like her heart - on her sleeve and he's awed by it, basks in it, a cold-blooded creature dependent upon her warmth. Stefan eclipsed him in the past (again and again, from the second he was born well past the moment that they died) but she sees them both. Maybe she's the only one who ever has.

"_I'm a _vampire_, Elena," he tells her. "Killing is in the job description."_

_He sluffs it off like it's nothing. Like it's absolute. Like that's all there is to him and she'd be ridiculous to look past that. She's always been ridiculous._

_She smiles in a small way that makes her look older than her years (older than his years) and touches her fingertips to the back of his hand, a little gesture that should mean nothing but sets him on edge, his skin burning and his jaw tight._

"_You've always been more than just a vampire, Damon," she says._

_She never leaves scars._


End file.
